"To enter Canada costs a Chinaman $500. Last year thirteen hundred and
eighty paid the tax, the treasury of the country receiving from them
$690,000. _The Missionary Witness_ makes the statement that combined
contributions of the Christians of Canada for the evangelization of
heathen nations was only about half as much as the Chinese paid for the
privilege of living in Canada. It asks, Is it not amazing that in
prosperous Canada 1,380 men cannot be secured who will voluntarily tax
themselves to send the Gospel to heathen lands as much as 1,380
heathens are taxed by us to land on our shores? The love of Christ
constraineth us! How much?"
Have we not here a practical acknowledgment that the idea of the heathen
dropping every moment into endless fire is not really believed?
As I say elsewhere, this revulsion of heart and mind is a strong plea
that the doctrine is not true. And it is a fearful thing to quench that
inner light. I have already quoted Carlyle's trenchant words on this
point. But I have just now met with another saying of his of still more
scathing intensity; and I would ask you to ponder his words well. He
says: "What is incredible to thee, thou shalt not, at thy soul's peril,
attempt to believe. Elsewhither for a refuge, or die here. Go to
Perdition if thou must--but not with a lie in thy mouth; by the Eternal
Maker, no!"
To be sure, such courage and candor might cost dear. Some years ago
there was an able and conscientious minister of the Canadian
Presbyterian Church who took the risk of being candid. He was a most
lovable man; able, eloquent, active, helpful, humorous, candid, tender,
devout; in fact, possessed of nearly every desirable quality. But he had
the larger hope; and one day he unguardedly gave expression to it in the
words of Tennyson:
"O yet we trust that, somehow, good
Will be the final goal of ill--"
and so on. Immediately he was a marked man, and the question was not
allowed to settle until he was placed on trial for heterodoxy. There was
considerable turmoil and excitement; but ultimately some kind of a
compromise was reached by which his orthodoxy was vindicated. He told me
that if he were once out of the church of which he was then minister, he
could get no other. I suppose he meant that he could not accept the
standards of the church; and of course that attitude would debar him.
SOUNDNESS IN THE FAITH.
At the same time it is but right that the Church should protect its
soundness in the faith by some form of subscription. The trouble is,
however, that the form now in force is subscribed to with reservations.
Then what reservations? They are not defined; so it comes to this, that
each subscriber makes his own reservations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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